Things Built (projects)Alan's CREATE Skunkworks
Notes and links to projects/prototypes for work at Northern Arizona University.

Ideal Gas Law Multiuser Application
Collaborative environment for students to learn the relationship of 3 variables within the ideal gas law. This includes and instructors tool for creating groups, adjusting settings, and monitoring groups progress.

Laraine Anne Barker
[Rotorua, NZ]
I originally met Laraine via a connection with our Writing HTML tutorial and our Hero's Journey sites. She writes fantasy stories for children & teens and provides web advice online, and in the time since I visited, her first book Obsidian Quest has been published... check her site for chapters from her work.

Whanganui Regional Community Polytechnic
[Wanganui, NZ]
Whanganui, well recognized for their strong multimedia arts program, provided an opportunity to witness how graphic design is taught and to interact with the students. Two informal presentations on multimedia for graphics design students.

National College of Multimedia & Technology (NCMT)
[Wellington, NZ]
a provider of private training in multimedia and web design. I got to visit the facilities in Wellington, present informaly to students about the multimedia business and technical issues, and to view student projects.

National College of Design & Technology
[Wellington, NZ]
is another provider of graphic arts programs where I had an opportunity to tour the facilities and speak with students. They have a very effective, real-world project oriented approach.

Che Tamahori, SHIFT
[Wellington, NZ]
Che is a multimedia developer with SHIFT, now primarily providing web development support. Che is legendary as a graduate of Whanganui Polytechnic who pioneered work in menaingful 3D interface design and navigation systems.

David Wood, Pixelpump
[Wellington, NZ]
Dave is a developer of educational software. On a stormy day in Wellington we traded design stories and project ideas, and witnessed a meeting of two iBooks.

Teacher Education And Learning Solutions (TEALS)
[Canberra Institute of Technology, Australia]
supports teachers in acquiring of educational qualifications and providing professional development that supports resource development and instructional design, with a particular focus on flexible learning.

Riverina Institute of TAFE
[New South Wales, Australia]
Riverina covers a vast distance and numerous locations in mid-sized to small, isolated communities of southern New South Wales. I visited facutly and support staff at Wagga Wagga, Albury, Narrandera, Leeton, Griffith, Lake Corgelligo, West Wyalong, and Temora, plus the Murrin Bridge Aboriginal Community where the TAFE system has been supporting several educational initiatives.

Charles Sturt University (CSU)
[Wagga Wagga and Thurgoona camopuses, New South Wales, Australia]
Brief visits with an Information Technolgies instructor at Wagga Wagga, and the new, environmentally designed campus at Thurgoona.

Minty Hunter, Nectarine
[Melbourne, Australia]
Nectarine is a small, but innovative, multimedia development company specializing in interactive web development.

Jan Whitaker, JLWhitaker Associates
a former collegue from Maricopa who provides educational research and consultation for educational and government agencies in Australia; Jan is an expert in group processes and electronic faciliation.

Flexible Learning Leaders
Guest speaker in the online forum for this professional development fellowship program for educational managers across Australia [November 20-26]

TAFE NSW Online
Attended the two day conference on "learningware" being developed among the TAFE system across New South Wales. They conned me into providing some closing remarks [November 19-22]

Open Learning 2000
Attended and presented at this conference with a theme of "generating opportunities" sponsored by the Learning Network Queensland [December 5-8]

Things Presented"Quality for Online Courses-- Guidelines, not Tramlines"
Workshop for faculty and learning support staff at UNITEC, co-presented with Richard Elliot, Director of Learning Technologies on September 6. We reviewed the issues of quality in web courses, led a brainstorming session on interestes, and briefly reviewed with them the evaluation concepts that are part of MCLI's What a Site! online workshop.

From .az to .nz: Maricopa Community Colleges & MCLI
This is "Maricopa 101"... an overview of the Maricopa Community Colleges, technology at Maricopa, the Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction (MCLI), and overviews of MCLI's projects/initiatives. Presented in Flash, the whole thing, animations, sounds, and cool interface, comes in at a paltry 100k. Streamed in, not pre loaded. And it scales to any size display. Can't do that in old plaid Powerpoint! Presented September 15 at UNITEC.

Things ReadDouglas Adams and Mark Carwardine (1990) Last Chance to See London: Pan Books.Adams is best known for his witty, sarcastic, sci-fi series, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. But in this book he teams up with zoologist Carwardine for a series of travels to obscure corners of Africa, China, and New Zealand to track some of the last of the endangered species. I grabbed it for the chapter "Heartbeats in the Nights" about New Zealand's kakapo. I sent this to my bird friend Betty.

Robert G. Barrett (1995) Day of the Gecko London: Pan Books.
Part of a series about Australia tough guy/tender heart Les Norton. Very light reading, in fact, it was so light I had to tie weights on the book to keep it from floating away. It was mostly transparent on plot and the characters were thinly developed (whatever happened to Susie and the strange guy at the airport?). But it did toss a wide array of Australia phrases and terms at me and ate up a good chunk of the bus ride out of Auckland. This book I left at a friend's bookshelf in the Coromandel

Wired
Heavier than most hardbacks, an issue of Wired magazine typically filled my reading for weeks with well written stories of technology and society. But in the last year or two the decent articles have seemed lost among the ads and catalog type glossy features. This issue had some good reads on robotics, but like most, I tossed it before reading the whole thing. It was weighing me down.

Paulo Coelho (1998) The Alchemist New York: Harper Collins.
This book jumped out from the rack in the Whitianga bookstore- the parable of Santiago, the young Spanish shepherd who answers his own call to adventure that lies in a treasure in Egypt. In his travels he comes to know a King, an alchemist, and an alluring desert girl, but most of all, he discovers that the way is indicated when he listens to his heart. A great story for all personal journeys. This book I kept!

Denis Welch (2000) Human Remains Wellington: David Ling Publishing.
I hate to knock a first effort from an author, but this novel left me way short. Supposedly the discovery of a skeleton of an ancient moa hunter on the New Zealand South Island connects a strand of conspiracy and suspense. The characters are thin cardboard and hints of supernatural or spiritual directions in the front of the book are left behind for a plain jane car chase as good as a weeknight movie on channel 65. I donated the book at a backpackers motel in Queenstown.

Alice Thomson (1999) The Singing Line London: Random House.
Author Thomson relates the story of her namesake, great-great grandmother Alice Todd for whom the outback town of Alice Springs was named. Charles Todd was the English scientist who in the 1860s connected Australia with England by stringing a telegraph spanning the previously uncrossed desert wilderness. Thomson successfuly intertwines the heroic efforts of 19th century Australians with her own modern crossing of the same route. I am saving this book!

Neal Stephenson (2000) Cryptonomicon London: Random House.Sweeping back and forth from World War II to the present, this thick plot (918 pages!) weaves a dense tale of enccryption and its roles in the war to modern day iterations in cyber banking, with characters that rub elbows with Alan Turing. Thanks to my friend Minty in Melbourne for suggesting the book, which still took my til January 2001 to finish.